In The End
August 20: Alhambra
Word Count: 425

The palace of the Nasrid dynasty is beautiful, all elegant arches and curves. Shiho stares into the courtyard's shallow pool while two men in black suits talk to the curator in Spanish off to the side.

These past few years, Shiho has been relentlessly shuttled around the globe. She's sat in on biomedical research lectures in the United States. She's deciphered ancient alchemical texts in Italy. She's visited China to learn centuries' old healing techniques, Mexico to read myths on Mayan temple walls, and even Japan to investigate some small island with a legend about the properties of mermaid flesh.

Her life has become wrapped up in the search for immortality, and it is for this purpose, on the organization's behest, that she has come to Alhambra, following yet another unlikely lead in hopes that the Muslim empire left behind clues on how to reverse the stream of time.

Shiho notes that the conversation between the men in black and the curator is winding down and idly wonders if she jumped into the pool she would be able to break her neck.

Her life, Shiho thinks sometimes, has become wonderfully ironic--because while she searches for immortality, she wishes simply for death. Everywhere she goes, she finds herself imagining different ways to commit suicide. She won't actually do it, of course, because then Akemi's life would be in jeopardy, but it's a kind of release in itself, to imagine herself stepping out in front of a bus in Singapore or falling through that British museum's stain glass windows.

"Come on," one of the men says, and Shiho tears her gaze away from the pool and follows them inside. The weather is hot this time of year, but Shiho doesn't pay it any mind, just sits down, carefully opens a dusty tome, and starts translating.

It will be a pointless endeavor, Shiho knows, just as the organization's entire obsession will, in the end, be fruitless.

Look around, sometimes she wants to say. Everyone wants to be immortal. That's why they built palaces and temples and pyramids out of stone. That's why they carved their names and deeds in the walls. That's why everyone is so obsessed with fame. Everyone wants to be remembered. Everyone wants to outlive themselves. In the end, though, the elements tear down what we've built and we forget the names carved in stone. We die, and everyone else moves on. It is inevitable.

Shiho believes in inevitability. That's why she quietly reads the archaic writing and imagines herself hanging from the ceiling.